Watari Worried
by A.Pseudonym
Summary: Watari brings L the BB murder case file. Just having fun with a certain aspect of Death Note; a short one-shot joke really.


_A/N: What's with these names? __I mean really! Except for Near, who got landed with a surprisingly normal name, I think everyone who isn't Japanese have names ranging from the slightly unusual (like Raye Penber) to... well. Spoilers for the Another Note novel and L's name and everything I suppose. This might have a serious tone in places, but I'm just pulling the piss really. No offence to any Bottomslashes out there!_

--

"Watari, I have to draw the line somewhere. There's thousands of new unsolved cases everyday, and no matter how many aliases I make up, I am only one person. So, ten victims or one million dollars... You know this."

L was sitting at his computer, poring over the details of some top secret file. If Watari hadn't known him since he had been two apples and a pancake tall, he might have taken offence at the dismissive tone, but he knew it was just L's non-existent social skills making themselves known. Watari knew that, was he to pull L up on his rude tone, L would apologise and explain facts, all the while being unable to avoid talking to Watari like he was a child. So Watari had given up the free charm school attempts years ago.

"I know that. Still, I ask you to take a look at this." Watari held out a stapled bunch of papers.

L turned his head and chewed his lip and looked like he was making difficult calculations. He hated changing his mind, his routines, his rules. There had to be order in the chaos, or all the millions of facts and factors he kept in his brilliant mind would fall apart into chaos. It was a precarious structure, Watari knew.

"Why, what's so special about it?" he said, not touching the papers.

"See for yourself." Watari smiled in his infinite patience.

L still hesitated, fidgeting with his toes and biting the nail on one thumb, but he was clearly curious. Eventually, he sighed and grabbed the papers, flipping the first sheet and scanning the text.

"Three killings? Only three? Nothing to connect them, except these Wara Ningyo dolls tells us it's a serial killer... Watari, the world is full of serial killers."

There was a hint of sadness in his voice, but he still managed to sound like a parent explaining why they can't afford a pony.

"But the victims..." Watari said.

"Victims. Yeah. One male, two female. Forty-four, thirteen, twenty-six. No connection, different methods of killing, different lines of work... why this?"

He looked up at Watari from his chair, dangling the papers from his fingertips and looking clueless. It was a contradiction, how someone so intelligent could look so lost a lot of the time. Watari stood immobile. Sometimes L was too clever for his own good, analysing things at a depth that made him overlook the big, obvious picture. Like looking at a jigsaw puzzle through a microscope.

"I... guess it worries me, a little," Watari said.

"I can't see why you would be more worried by this than any... oh. Oh."

Watari nodded. L folded the sheet back in place and put the papers down beside his computer. He looked up at Watari with a look that said he was trying to put something as politely as he could. Finally, he spoke up.

"Watari. Thank you for your concern. I know you always have my best interests at heart, and you worry about me, but... I really don't believe my name is that unusual. I mean, yes, it's just an initial, but I have no doubt my parents were going to expand on it. If they hadn't died, they would have made their minds up, and I could have been called... I don't know..." he stuck a finger into his mouth and looked off into the distant past. "Maybe Lance, or Leon, or Lee, or Lucas, or..."

Oh no, the freewheeling through process was turning into a runaway train. Watari knew that this could go on for some time; there was something about word association, or lists of any kind, that L had a very hard time cutting off by himself. Someone usually had to shout out "that's it" to interrupt the flow.

"Yes," Watari said. "That is true. They could have had a name in mind and not had time to complete the birth certificate. We will never know."

L looked down. He had never let on that his 'unusual' name bothered him, not even as a young child, but Watari suspected that this rootlessness was something that lay very deep within L.

"Anyway," L said quietly, "I have real surname. Almost normal." He stared down at the desk, back hunched over even more now, and rested his chin against his knees.

This had been a bad idea. Watari knew there had been a potential sore point here, but he really was quite worried about this case. But L looked so deflated right now that he didn't have the heart to push the issue.

"I mean, it's not like _these, _right?" L said, reaching over to the desk and flipping the page open again. "'Quarter Queen'. Yeah. 'Believe Bridesmaid'—I mean what were _his_ parents thinking. 'Backyard Bottomslash' for god's sake! I'm no Backyard Bottomslash at least, sure I'm not Watari?"

"No, dear boy. You're not."

"I mean, if you're born into a long line of Bottomslashes, perhaps it's too late, no matter what you do. Backyard might not make the case much worse."

"There are plenty of Winterbottoms in England," Watari reminded him gently to lighten the mood.

"True. But Bottomslash – it's a bit like 'Dr Death', isn't it. I mean what career options would she have had?"

Watari smiled. "She was a bank clerk, I do believe."

"I can see that. But I bet she was a dominatrix in her spare time."

They grinned at each-other; a rare moment of lightheartedness in a dark world. Watari nodded and put his hand on L's shoulder, just a brief, fatherly touch.

"You're right," he said. "There are so many cases and so little time. Forget I said anything."

Watari headed for the door. Poor L, he had not had an easy life, and it was really no wonder that—at twenty-two—he was in many ways still like a child. A brilliant child with lots of theoretical experience and knowledge, but... emotionally stable he was not, and Watari didn't fault him for that. Still, if he had not been so traumatised by his own past, he might have looked a bit further outside himself and—perhaps—realised that when the oddball names of the world had their own serial killer, it was not strange if it seemed a little threatening to a man with the name of Quillish Wammy.


End file.
